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Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben, BWV147

Recordings

'in one disc after another you are drawn towards a deeply personal quality that endeared her to thousands … this set will prompt endless reapprai ...'A stunning collection of music played by one of the most talented of British pianist' (MusicWeb International)» More

'A magnificent addition to both the Bach repertoire and Angela Hewitt's artistically unparallelled survey of Bach's keyboard compositions' (Fanfare, USA)'A collection of rarities and oddities that makes for enjoyable listening. The quality of the Hyperion recording is excellent, with the right balance ...» More

In 1931 the pianist and muse Harriet Cohen invited all her principal composer friends each to make an arrangement of a work by J S Bach for inclusion in an album to be published by Oxford University Press. Published as A Bach Book for Harriet Cohe ...» More

Ethel Bartlett and Rae Robertson both studied at the Royal Academy of Music with Tobias Matthay in the 1910s. They were married in 1921 and a few years later established a two-piano duo, which quickly became the first such team to achieve truly in ...» More

Piers Lane gambols delightfully through the 20th century in this album of encores, party pieces and a few pianophile rarities, ranging from Dame Myra Hess’s unforgettable arrangement of Bach’s Jesu, joy of man’s desiring to Dudley Moore’s equally ...» More

Through the way where Hope is guiding, Hark what peaceful music rings. Where the flock in Thee confiding, Drink of joy from deathless springs. Theirs is beauty’s fairest pleasure, Theirs is wisdom’s holiest treasure. Thou dost ever lead Thine own In the love of joys unknown.

Robert Bridges (1844-1930)

The sacred cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach were intended for inclusion in the services of the Lutheran church and were intimately associated with the liturgy. Often they were written for a specific season or event in the church’s year and based on a relevant chorale and texts from the Epistle or Gospel for the day. A choir would be needed, with one or more solo singers and an orchestra including a keyboard continuo, and there might be recitatives, arias, possibly a duet, choruses and settings of the chosen chorale, both simple and more elaborate. Church Cantata No 147 (‘Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben’ – ‘Heart and mouth and deed and life’) was sung in July 1723 at the Thomaskirche, Leipzig, where Bach had just been appointed Cantor. The chorale Jesu, joy of man’s desiring, with its oboe obbligato here recreated on the organ, is the cantata’s final movement.

Myra Hess’s transcription of Jesu, joy of man’s desiring brought Bach to the masses during the Second World War. Her famous lunchtime concerts broadcast live from The National Gallery in London were aimed to boost morale, and people still talk of them today. Of this time she said: ‘Never have I practised so little and played so much!’ Born in 1890, she studied with Tobias Matthay and, after her debut with Sir Thomas Beecham, toured extensively in the USA and Europe. Grove’s 1954 dictionary describes her as ‘among an elite of pianists who approached their instrument as a means of conveying music as a spiritual experience’. Jesu, joy quickly became her signature tune after she first heard the original at a rehearsal for a Bach Festival given in April 1920. It is the last movement from the Cantata No 147, Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben (‘Heart and Mouth and Deed and Life’) where it is sung by the chorus with trumpet doubling the melody. Strings and continuo provide the accompaniment, with oboes joining the violins for the triplets. The rise and fall in the dynamic level of the chorale mirrors the words:

The ability to translate spirituality into sound at the keyboard is certainly necessary here – otherwise such a famous tune sounds banal and hackneyed. Besides Hess’s own, there have been other famous pianists’ recordings of this transcription including those by Lipatti and Gieseking, while Kempff recorded his own arrangement.

Cohen’s contemporary and rival for the crown of leading British woman pianist, Myra Hess (1890–1965), was much less of a modern-music specialist but was greatly admired as a Bach player, and made a number of transcriptions of her own. Jesu, joy of man’s desiring, Hess’s version of the chorale from Cantata No 147, first published in 1926, has become a well-loved recital item in its own right for its quietly ecstatic flow of triplet figuration over the noble chorale melody, though it is a tricky piece to balance.

Jesu, joy of man’s desiring is as synonymous with the great British pianist Dame Myra Hess (1890–1965), who made this iconic transcription, as are the National Gallery wartime concerts she gave in London. It has become a mainstay of my repertoire. In 2009, as Artistic Director of the annual memorial Myra Hess Day at the Gallery, I commissioned Nigel Hess, Dame Myra’s great nephew, to write a script based on her own words from interviews and diaries about the wartime concert series so indelibly associated with her, and which Hess considered her lifetime’s prime achievement. Words and music were sensitively woven together in a show called Admission: One Shilling, which has now been performed in dozens of theatres and halls. The great actress Patricia Routledge narrates to a background slideshow of contemporaneous photographs, and I play a repertoire espoused by Hess during her career. Inevitably, this culminates in a performance of Jesu, joy, over which moving words are uttered, including Hess’s statement: ‘If I had died the day peace was declared, I’d have felt my life’s work was complete.’

Hess was inspired to transcribe the chorale after she heard a rehearsal for a Bach Festival in April 1920. The solo version was published in 1926, the duet in 1934. John Amis—a nonagenarian wonder who frequently turned pages during the wartime concerts, and whose memories still amaze listeners—mentioned recently that Dame Myra’s rendition of this transcription became slower and more dignified the more often she played it. The original Bach chorale—the tenth and final movement of Cantata No 147, Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben (‘Heart and mouth and deed and life’), sung by a chorus accompanied by trumpet, strings, oboe, and basso continuo—seems rather sprightly compared with the reverential tone with which we tend to imbue the transcription. That is partly because the English words (from which comes the title), by the poet laureate Robert Bridges, are not a direct translation of the German stanzas used by Bach, which suggest a lively hymn of praise.